


win probability added

by ohtempora



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Hair-pulling, M/M, Playoffs, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 08:52:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17957438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohtempora/pseuds/ohtempora
Summary: "You're not the only thing that loses the team a ballgame," Joe says."I know, but—""Cut the bullshit," Joe tells him, kinder than he could be, and Max shuts up.





	win probability added

**Author's Note:**

> in 2017, coming off a hundred loss season, the twins lost the single-elimination wild card to the yankees after going up 3-0 in the top of the first and chasing the yankees' starting pitcher.
> 
> the yankees won the game 8-4. when twins fans say "fuck the yankees," i'm like yeah, that's fair.

After the final out of the game, when the Yankees are celebrating on their home field and the crowd is roaring in pleasure and shock, Max can see where it all went wrong. Or: he can see where the game should have broken for the Yankees, and how it didn't, how New York bent and flexed and his team snapped in half before they got crunched underfoot.   
  
Up three runs before recording an out, and then. Two sharp strikeouts by Chad Green, a three run home run by Didi Gregorius and the swelling, disbelieving scream of the New York crowd. What was a lead became a tie game, then eventually it was ballgame. Sure, they didn’t lose it during the bottom of the first when the Yankees scored, but that’s when they should have shut them down and put the game away.   
  
It's late in the Bronx. Quiet when they exit the stadium, except for the loud fans still packed in two-story sports bars, the stream of stragglers heading happy and tipsy towards the trains. Max would like to go get anonymously, belligerently drunk at some shitty hipster bar in lower Manhattan, but that is not one of the options available to him right now.   
  
Half an hour ago in the locker room he watched Joe murmur reassuring words to Zack Granite, who failed to step on a base and is from Staten Island and named his childhood dog after Derek Jeter and helped lose the game for the Twins. He watched Berrios slump with exhaustion and Dozier cover his face with a towel. Max watched as Buxton winced as he moved, hand carefully cupping his shoulder. He'll now have the whole offseason to heal. 

Max stayed silent, himself.   
  
They get on the team bus, file in, quiet with the misery of losing. They'll fly back to the Twin Cities in the morning. They’ve got all night to let the loss sink in.   
  
Joe drops into the seat next to him, rubs a hand over his face. "I'm sorry," Max says fruitlessly. Joe deserves a World Series. Joe at least deserved an ALDS and a chance to compete. Joe didn't deserve this unceremonious loss, this unfortunate shellacking.   
  
"You're not the only thing that loses the team a ballgame," Joe says. Max wonders if he said the same thing to Granite. It's what you say to a rookie.    
  
"I know, but—"   
  
"Cut the bullshit," Joe tells him, kinder than he could be, and Max shuts up.   
  
Back at the hotel enough people head to the bar that Max half-thinks he'll go down with them, drink until Judge's home run and subsequent beaming smile stop playing behind his eyes. Last season — his rookie season — they lost a hundred games and they'd gone out after that hundredth loss, toasted sarcastically under their breath. This year, well. Until an hour ago it was a turnaround.   
  
He goes to his room and drops off his bag, splashes some water on his face and stares into the mirror. It doesn’t do anything. Why would it? He sighs, turns off the bathroom light, and grabs a flannel shirt, shoves his feet back in his shoes and goes to meet his teammates at the bar.

It’s clear a couple of the guys will stay parked there until closing time, the sort of silent drinking you can only do when you’re this fucking sad. Max makes it half an hour before he starts to watch Joe out of the corner of his eyes and waits for his cue.  
  
They've been fucking for about two years now, starting after Max's first major league hit, when Joe took him home to celebrate and left him gasping for breath on the bed. In the clubhouse Joe is the perfect team captain and wise veteran, and when he asks Max to come over he's — it's different. Max gets off on it, and it's probably helping his baseball somehow, even if he doesn't like to think about that. Settling him in his own head, centering him when he swings.   
  
Sitting at the bar, Joe doesn't drink much and so Max doesn't either. He thinks it's because Joe wants them both to feel it. Wear the loss. Max doesn't like to think about how Joe's getting older and his head is fragile, how Cleveland is still the team to beat in the AL Central and there's no guarantee they even make it far enough to lose in the wild card again.

Eventually their teammates start to trickle upstairs. When it's mostly cleared out, Joe heads to the elevator and Max follows him. The two of them stand alone in the elevator, surrounded by mirrors in every direction. Max is familiar with his own face, familiar with Joe's. He stares at his feet on the ground until the door open, and then he follows Joe down the hall.

Joe’s hotel room looks like his, but bigger. Same expensive view of New York City. Max watches as Joe steps smartly across the room and closes the curtains, cutting off their view of the skyline.

“That’s better,” Joe says, even though it isn’t. “You’re still dressed.”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you get your clothes off, then.”

Max nods and pulls his shirt over his head, kicks off his shoes and pulls off his socks, unbuttons his jeans. He pulls his belt out and coils it neatly, sets it down onto the chair to his left. His underwear goes last and his dick bobs out, already half-hard from Joe’s calm words. The anticipation. It always goes like this, Joe getting him hot before they even touch, not intentionally. Just because they’ve been doing this for long enough that he— expects it, expects something, his body trained to know it’ll be worth it in the end.

“Alright.” Joe has his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, his feet planted shoulder-width apart. “Get on the bed.”

Max gets on the bed, kneeling. Waits for Joe to move him.

“Hands and knees.”

He listens, angles himself forward. He can feel Joe's eyes on him. Waits again for the first touch. Joe’s fingertips brush over the small of his lower back, and then Joe says, “Spread your thighs a little wider.”

Max has his eyes closed now. He doesn’t need to see Joe’s face to follow Joe’s instructions. He shifts his knees apart.

“Get yourself hard."

Max exhales because that’s not gonna take much and they both know it, his dick hanging heavy between his legs. He wraps his hand around himself and jerks it a few times, jolts when Joe’s finger slides against him, cold with lube. It’s a light touch, it’s not much, and Max sinks down onto an elbow, palm sliding over the head of his dick. God, he thought they'd go slow. Didn't think it'd be this soon. 

“I’m gonna fuck you now,” Joe tells him. Max nods, braces himself against the mattress with both hands and waits. Joe presses against him with the blunt head of his dick, one hand around Max’s hip, opening him up with slow, inexorable pressure. Max breathes out, forces himself to relax. It's good. He deserves to be fucked hard. It makes him feel better, to focus on one single point of contact, all pain-pleasure and his toes curling against the sheets. Joe’s breathing steadily above him, fingers gripping the flesh of his hip, and that hurts too but it’s also good. He needs all of it.

Joe sinks in, centimeter by centimeter, and Max takes all of it like they both knew he could. When he’s most of the way there his free hand lands in Max’s hair and he tugs, forcing Max’s back to arch, pulling Max back onto his dick. Max’s dick pulses between his legs, a trickle of precome wet at the tip, and he hisses, the sound of it loud in the quiet room.

Finally— finally Joe’s all the way seated. He drizzles more lube down the crack of Max’s ass, pulls halfway out and shoves back in.

It’s rough like Max thought it would be, like he wanted it to be, from the minute they got back into that hotel bar with the elimination hanging over their heads. He doesn’t want Joe to reassure him that they’ll get there next year— who knows if they’ll get there next year. He just wants Joe.

Joe’s fucking him hard enough that the bed frame squeaks underneath them, even brutal strokes. Max could come as soon as he gets a hand on his dick, but Joe didn’t say he could touch himself, and Joe’s still tugging on his hair, squeezing his hip, keeping Max pinned exactly how he wants him.

God, the fucking game. He knows about win probability, what their chances must have looked like with one out— _one out_ — in the first inning. How the hell did they fall apart so fast, when they didn’t have to, when the moment should have been theirs.

“Don’t think about it anymore,” Joe says, fucks into him hard again like he's trying not to think either, and Max chokes on a sob, gets this close to coming all over Joe’s slippery hotel comforter. He doesn’t, he can’t; it’s too raw, but he knows Joe’s close from how sharp each shove of his hips is, how he’s barely pulling out before pushing back in.

Joe comes inside him with a groan, some strangled noise crossed between a curse and Max’s own name. He yanks on Max’s hair harder than he meant to and Max yelps, spine bowing into a parabolic curve.

“Sorry,” Joe says, when he’s caught his breath, dick still deep inside Max. “Sorry. I didn't mean to.”

“It’s alright,” Max says; that, at least, is. A sore scalp in the morning will be the least of his worries. He drops onto his elbows again and catches his own breath as Joe pulls out, lube and come easing the way.

“You didn’t get off,” Joe says, and before Max is done shaking his head Joe’s got two fingers back inside him, working his come back into Max, his other hand wrapped around Max’s dick. His fingers are huge inside Max, calloused and rough. After a year, Joe knows how to work him over, make him fall apart. It doesn’t take much, caught as he is between Joe’s hands, and Max shakes through his own orgasm before collapsing flat onto the bed.

His heart’s pounding in his ears, and he squeezes his eyes shut until all he can see are stars. Joe’s moving besides him, the mattress dipping when he gets up to go to the bathroom to clean himself off, and dipping again when he gets back onto the bed.

“I'm sorry,” Max says fruitlessly, turns over and presses his face into the pillow. He thinks back to the expanding feeling in his chest when his double knocked Severino out of the game. Stupid. “The playoffs, I wanted—”

“We're going home in the morning,” Joe says. One heavy hand presses against Max's shoulder. He doesn’t say that it’s alright. He doesn’t say what will happen in the morning, though Max can extrapolate. A miserable plane flight. Locker cleanout when they’re back in the Twin Cities. Max can’t stay here, as much as he might want to; Joe has his own thoughts to deal with, his own missed chances. Who knows how much longer he’ll play, one year or two, or if this is it.

“I just thought,” Max says, gives up. They all thought, _Twins versus Yankees, maybe this time it’ll be different._ The entire season they played better, they _competed_.

He knows how the wildcard works. Win your division. Cleveland won 22 damn games in a row. The Twins never had a hope of winning their division. He doesn’t say any of this, though, doesn’t say how they wanted to win it for Joe, get Joe to the playoffs before his body gave out, before the game failed him.

Twisting, Joe reaches to pull the top sheet over both of them with one hand, then gets close. He needs the contact too, Max realizes. A decade-plus in the major leagues doesn’t make you immune to a loss.

So maybe Max can’t sleep here, but he can stay for a little bit, even if the air between them is uneasy. Joe’s body is long and warm against his. There’s a faint chill in the city air seeping in around the windowpane. It’s gotta be past 2 AM, maybe past 3, but the city is all lit up. Max closes his eyes and focuses on Joe’s hand on him, the warm pressure, until his shoulders drop and the tension bleeds out.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway congrats on your extension, max kepler. 
> 
> [here](https://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/2017_ALWC.shtml) is the box score of the 2017 al wc game, and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCP_S1q8kMU) is the nutso first inning.


End file.
